Trent Lott's BET appearance, embracing affirmative action in its every form and effectively promising to support reparations for slavery, is his McCain moment. McCain is still a Republican in many ways, and belongs in the GOP caucus. I voted for him in the primaries, and I'm still not convinced he would not have made a good president himself. But McCain is totally unfit to be Majority Leader because remorse over the Keating Five scandal has driven him to crusade against his own party's position on a significant issue - campaign financing - which in turn has led him to fall in with his new ideological bedfellows on other issues of greater public importance.

Lott's new embrace of racial preferences and the like may well be a sham - it probably is - but Republicans can't run the risk of being led by another McCain, a guy who pours buckets of boiling scorn on his own party out of guilt.